The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business recently conducted a study on the relationship between social media and small business. The study showed that nearly one in five small business owners are integrating social media into their business practices, and 75% have a profile or fanpage on Linkedin or Facebook.

The study also goes on to show that small business owners realize the unparalleled access to potential customers through the power of social media.  For example, local businesses with a storefront can use social media resources like Yelp to engage with potential customers. Search combined with social media has provided a new realm of marketing and lead generation. Say you plan a trip to San Francisco and you want to find a good Thai food restaurant. You can simply type in “Thai Food San Francisco, CA” on LeapFish, and you will see the top 3 recommended Thai food restaurants in San Francisco.

The evolution of the real-time web has also added a new vehicle for free targeted promotion.  Twitter enables small businesses to engage with potential consumers in real-time. Small business owners use Twitter to create brand loyalty by providing value and a face to the product. You can also engage with small business professionals that share similar experiences; SmallBusinessTrends.com provides a list that acts as a directory for all small businesses Ultimate Small Business Twitter List . Joining a community of Small Business owners provides a space to discuss strategy and share incite as changes occur in your industry.

Small business owners can also capitalize on the power of free promotion by setting up a blog or content page. They now have the power to join the conversation by providing meaningful incite. “The two primary reasons people use the web are to find solutions to their problems and to be entertained” said Denise Wickman. Simply follow the three E’s: Educate, entertain and engage, and you’ll be on your way to becoming a thought leader in your industry.

However, not all small business owners have the time to blog. Setting up a content page or social hub provides another form of free promotion.  On LeapFish you can set up a profile page to include your Twitter stream, profile information from Facebook and Linkedin, blog roll, images, and videos all in one page, consider it a convenient and optimized snapshot of your business at no charge.

With minimal effort you can turn your business into a living breathing brand online. LeapFish makes it easy for your potential customers to find all of your social media content in one destination.

LeapFish recently integrated Topsy.com, a search engine that finds the most talked about links on Twitter and organizes them by popularity and influence. Users now have the most popular and influential links on Twitter identified for them.

For example, during the Winter Olympics thousands of conversations are occurring, hundreds of articles & blogs are being written, and millions of URL’s are being tweeted in real-time. Users want to know what’s happening now, who’s winning, the medal count, and injury reports as they occur. People want news now, not tomorrow. However this content must be accurate, the most accurate content is what users will share and that is how Topsy adds a new level of relevancy to LeapFish real-time search.

On LeapFish if you do a search for Winter Olympics, you will see breaking news, recently dugg articles , recent photos, recent videos, real time tweets , and the most popular content being tweeted in real-time on the web (shown below). Since we post photos & videos from sites like YouTube and Flickr live in real -time,  you might even find content from fans live at the games, content you wouldn’t have found anywhere else – streamed to you automatically in real-time.

Traditional search engines provide a different perspective on real-time search, displaying content within search results. For example  if you do a search on Google  for “Winter Olympics” you may see breaking news at the top of the page, then if you scroll down 4-5 links you will see a space for streaming real time content (shown below). LeapFish displays real-time content separate of traditional content in an easy to use interface, this interface provides a simple of way of determining relevancy and gives users the choice of searching traditional or real-time content.

As the web evolves, LeapFish will continue to innovate real-time search making the new web easier and convenient.

The web is no longer a set of blue links, the web has evolved into a living breathing information source and users now demand a deeper search experience, throwing away the archaic way of searching the web. Users expect an all encompassing on-demand search experience, this has lead to developments in real-time search, social search and the aggregation of social media content providers.

User generated content and social networking has changed the DNA of the web, a web that now belongs to the users. As we all know time is scarce; videos, media, and images will add a certain level of convenience, becoming a primary source of gathering information moving forward. LeapFish started this trend in 2008 when it introduced it’s roll-over video functionality and then expanded on that technology by integrating videos and images into the real-time search stream. Users no longer need to click on a link seen tweeted in real time, the video or image will be displayed in your search results.

The iPhone has created a frenzy enabling users to customize their own mobile experience. A different medium but the same concept applies as apps are beginning to cross over into our browsers, users now demand that same degree of customization online.  Applications continue to spring up online providing a certain level of convenience when accessing the social media world around us.  LeapFish recognized this as trend before it’s fruition as it is already equipping users with a personalized homepage that harnesses the most popular websites and social networking sites online.

The increasing adoption of real time tactics for socially driven search engines means that tools are hoping to bring the power of social networking and social bookmarking to the search scene, this level of integration will power immediate gratification for our information needs. LeapFish has already begun to integrate said functionality and allows users to share as they search, every piece of content found on LeapFish can be shared on popular social sites with one click of a button, adding another layer of convenience.

Lastly, search will see a stronger emphasis on geo locating technology. As users provide recommendations in real time, it will make further sense to see when and where said recommendations are being made.  LeapFish has already integrated business reviews into it’s search experience via Yelp however LeapFish will be integrating check-ins and foursquare functionality in the near future.

The world of search will eventually need to provide a deeper integrated search experience as new information sources become relevant online. Right now we continue to see a back- n- forth between real-time search engines, traditional search engines and social search engines.  LeapFish believes that all 3 provide a relevant searching experience and will continue to develop the integration of all three methods of searching the web. This is only the beginning and LeapFish will continue to be at the forefront of this evolution.

Late last year we released a new evolved search experience, LeapFish.  The objective behind the project was to make search more personal, increase social engagement, and most importantly improve content relevancy across a variety of data types.  This meant returning content that not only provides the most value, but also displays content in an organized fashion allowing users to quickly obtain information requested without feeling overwhelmed.

As we all know the internet is rapidly changing however search has remained stagnant and fails to evolve at the rate we all need it to. The idea of customizing/personalizing web pages has been around for years (far before LeapFish even existed).  Unfortunately, very few if any have been successful at it.  Take for example Google with their iGoogle product.  It allows registered users to select from hundreds of thousands of “Gadgets” that have largely been created (but not maintained) by 3^rd party developers.  Users can select to add to their iGoogle start page what seems to be an unlimited number of “Gadgets” that load as independent iframed pages. So where’s the problem and how does it fail?

Since the majority of the “Gadgets” are developed by 3^rd parties there’s no single source for support, nor does any standard exists with regard to design and layout. In addition, from a technical standpoint iframes are expensive when it comes to web page performance.  Since it doesn’t appear like any restrictions exist with regard to the number of “Gadgets” a user can add, a poor un-scalable environment is created that’s slow, heavy, and unstable , ultimately leading to a poor user experience.

With LeapFish we considered performance and organization to be important factors when giving the ability to customize.  We internally developed all the customizable homepage “widgets” (LeapFish’s version of Google’s Gadgets) without the use of any iframes.  This in turn allowed us to maintain the integrity of the product both at the organizational and performance level.  “Widgets” would no longer look grossly different from one another, and support on any issues/bugs is always provided by us. The development of homepage “widgets” is an ongoing project that may one day be opened to 3^rd party developers.

Another concept that held great importance was the idea of socializing content.  Blogging platforms and news sites seem to have this concept mastered however its use was rarely if ever implemented at the search portal level.  We made the conscious choice to make every piece of collateral on both the LeapFish homepage and search results pages “Sociable”.  If your search query returns an interesting piece of content, you can share it with a single click to a variety of sites including Twitter and Facebook.

This leaves us to content relevancy.  As many of you have experienced, search engines today focus on providing a single “type” of result to search queries.  Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing do a great job at finding and delivering relevant pieces of content in the form of web results (hence this is their default search type).  However suppose a user searches “how to lose weight” on Yahoo.com.  According to Yahoo’s algorithm today, Yahoo will return results in the form of type text media.  Unfortunately, given the various forms of media that exist today web/text results most likely aren’t going to be the most relevant or the most valuable.  Now if we do that same exact search on LeapFish.com we are immediately provided top news regarding the topic of losing weight.   LeapFish also provides shopping results that lists books available for sale regarding that topic, and most importantly the results page provides user generated content in the form of Wikihow, Twitter, and Videos.  These “other” data types are certainly valuable if not more valuable than results provided by traditional search engines.

In the end, the variety of data found online is a privilege and a tool. Users now expect to obtain the best and most relevant pieces of content from a single click of a button from a single search. Search is far from where it started and still has far to go in its evolution. LeapFish will continue to build off these goals and focuses to maintain scalability and agility as the internet evolves, providing a tool that harnesses the variety of the web as it becomes readily available.

Your search homepage is no longer just a simple search bar staring up at you, waiting for text to be entered. It’s your start page, your home on the web, the place to go when you want to find what’s going on in the world and in your world, online and off. With Leapfish customizable homepages, users can add and organize their experience on the web in just minutes with a dynamic and efficient interface.

LeapFish was carefully designed with your personal search and browsing needs in mind,  with Facebook connect you can easily set up a profile in minutes, once registered users can add and organize widgets with the unique drag n’ drop functionality.

Click on “Customize Homepage” in the upper-right of LeapFish.com to set your homepage layout to match your specific interests. If you prefer celebrity news, select the US Weekly News widget. If you prefer up-to-the-minute tech news, add the Wired News, TechCrunch and Mashable widgets. Sports fanatics even have a home at LeapFish and can track top sports stories with the Yahoo Sports Widget. For the social media fanatics, users can stay connected to their social web with Yelp Search, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter widgets.  The Twitter and Facebook applications provide a single interface to interact with friends and followers simultaneously from one page. Both applications allow users to search and follow friends on specific topics and you can easily tweet or update your Facebook status.

To fully customize your LeapFish experience, set up a LeapFish homepage. It’s an easy way to connect your social web and search. There’s no place like LeapFish.com, your new home on the web.

Real-time content changed everything. Twitter gave everyone with a computer or mobile device the power to update the world on what’s happening now in 140 characters or less. While the information produced by real-time user output alone looked like a big mess of useful and useless information, search engineers started to realize that creating algorithms to sort what’s useful in micro-blogging would be the next big thing in search.

By the end of 2009, every major search firm from Google to Microsoft and Yahoo (Bing) to LeapFish had real-time technology in place. LeapFish took this one step further by allowing users to connect to popular social media websites including facebook and twitter, enabling users to search a single source that encapsulates up-to-the -minute headlines from the most popular sites on the Internet, including breaking news, videos and conversations via a media rich real-time search experience.

The second, and perhaps biggest trend in search of 2009, was that search engineers realized “ten blue links” wasn’t cutting it anymore. The search experience was vastly behind the user experience elsewhere on the Web. With new content being added by the second, it became imperative for search to reflect the diversity and relevancy of content available. Videos, photos, blog posts, real-time opinions, news, audio, social graphs and web applications all belonged in search.

LeapFish CEO Ben Behrouzi saw this early on, telling Media Post earlier this year that ,”This is a new Internet, much different than the days when the original search engines were developed,” Behrouzi says. “The days of 1996 and 1997, when we captured the Internet with 10 blue links, are behind us. “LeapFish released its “Living Web” innovative Real-Time Social Search engine in November which offers users a multimedia search experience.

In 2009, search rivalries turned into partnerships and the popularity of search engines got a shakeup. In July, Bing swallowed Yahoo search, giving Yahoo the ability to focus its efforts outside of search and for Microsoft to be the search breadwinner in the newlywed’s battle against Google. The LeapFish Alexa rank has climbed steadily since the company’s launch in November of 2008, with Alexa’s Domestic Ranking in the US indicating that the company has passed other top search engines such as Cuil.com, MetaCrawler and many more. The site’s ranking continues on it’s growth trajectory, now at the 11,186 spot on Alexa, up hundreds in rank over the past year.

What will 2010 hold for search? Look for further innovation in multimedia and real-time from LeapFish. While 2009 turned on search’s extreme makeover, the innovation in search is far from over.

Everyone participated and gifts soon filled the break room.  The gifts varied from the hottest Snuggie on the market decked out in cheetah print to the highly sought after children’s toy the Zhu Zhu Motorized Hamster.

Yes Christmas is the season of giving however LeapFish truly captured the sneaky gift stealing spirit of the White Elephant gift exchange.  LeapFish employees are fierce competitors and in the spirit of the White Elephant Gift Exchange the most sought after gifts were stolen not once but twice leaving some without their dream gift  but in the end everyone had a great time, laughter filled the office and everyone  left with great gifts!

A big thank you to all LeapFish employees who participated in this years festivities! Without our people LeapFish is nothing. Every LeapFish employee plays an important role and we are thankful to be part of a loyal team of people  and it is through them that we’ve been able to perform month after month & continue to celebrate our success.

Our Team at LeapFish wishes everyone a  Happy New Year!

The dawn of a new era in search has arrived. To make search relevant for today’s web user, any player hoping to stay relevant in the search space can no longer ignore real-time search. The dominant search players, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo have taken note, each rushing to launch real-time search features and stay in the game.

This month, Google announced that its relevance-ranking search algorithms are now being used to sort through live posts on Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and, of course, Twitter. Google understands how important it is to be a leader in real-time search if they hope to remain on top of search in 2010.

Following the lead of Google, last week Yahoo added a real-time search function into its search results late. Yahoo said whenever there is a “spike” in interest in a particular topic across the Web, its search algorithms would be able to detect that and would mix relevant tweets about that topic into standard search results. With a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing almost finalized, the two companies will need to face Google and other real-time search players head on for a chance in the next generation of search.

Launched in November, LeapFish’s real-time search engine was at the start of the real-time search trend that has heated up over the last month. Our successful promotional video (below) for LeapFish’s November launch was followed by promotional videos from some of the biggest names (above) on the web marketing real-time search and what it means to our new web.

It is very clear that the quest for relevant sources of real time content will become increasingly sought after. Integrating micro blogging sites such as Twitter is only the beginning, new channels of communication will continue to add relevancy to our search experience online acting as a catalyst for change and innovation.

We are more connected and involved in the evolution and growth of the web than we ever were before.  The new web is here and it will not wait, however it will require new tools to interact with the web that you love.

Excerpt from the Article:

“The core functionality of LeapFish is still search, but the search box now has two buttons: ‘Real Time’ and ‘Search Web.’ The ‘Real Time’ button leads to a mosaic of real time results: News, trending topics, relevant top stories on Digg, fresh tweets and video results. In spite of the large amount of information, the search results are easy to navigate.”

Click here to read the entire Pandia Search Engine News article:

http://www.pandia.com/sew/2250-search-the-real-time-web-with-leapfish.html

Excerpt from the Article:

“The site offers some very interesting possibilities. It has some similarities to iGoogle but has managed to integrate social media faster than the search giant ”

Click here to read the entire Search Engine Watch Article:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/091112-224356